Pioneering Scholar In African Studies Finally Gets His Due

In an era of Jim Crow and "separate but equal," at a time when Alex Haley was but a lad, Melville Herskovits had a pretty audacious notion for a white scholar: African-Americans had roots.

The late Northwestern University anthropologist spent months at a time with black communities in Africa, the Caribbean and South America; absorbed songs, dances, folk tales and more; and then traced the path of that black experience across the sea and centuries into the bayous, back country and ghettos of the United States.

A melodic tone in the speech of West Africa led to a musical lilt in the accent of blacks, which then rubbed off on Southern whites, he found. Gumbos and Southern fried cooking were descendants of African cuisines. When the faithful at black churches spontaneously shouted "hallelujahs" and "amens" in mid-sermon, they were perpetuating a tradition that stretched back to West Africa.

What seems obvious today was revolutionary among white academics 60 years ago, even if it was not a surprise to some black scholars of the day. But it was a sad fact of racism that they lacked the stature and resources to scientifically document those links.

As such, Herskovits, whose centennial celebration was launched Thursday at Northwestern, is considered a seminal figure in the study of African peoples here and abroad.

He created the nation's first African studies program, created a library of Africana that has become the world's largest, was on a first-name basis with the likes of W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson and mentored others including Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Dunham. He also argued passionately for multicultural education, a concept that decades later grew into a broad movement on campuses around the country and today has become the subject of growing skepticism in some academic circles.

"He was interested in making Americans who were not African-American understand that the experience of slavery had not brainwashed a tenth of our population, that their traditions were a tribute to a people's ability to retain their past despite adversity," said Sidney Mintz, an expert in Afro-American culture at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

And yet, he is barely known outside academia. In part to remedy that and in part to recognize a remarkable legacy, Northwestern has planned a nine-month tribute to Herskovits, who was born a century ago and died in 1963.

Though he authored more than 500 books and articles touching on African culture, his pivotal work came in 1941 with "The Myth of the Negro Past," which forcefully argued that notions of black inferiority were rooted in ignorance of the African cultural heritage.

In prewar America, conventional wisdom among whites-and even some blacks-held that slavery had basically severed links to the African heritage of blacks. Herskovits' book challenged that concept head on.

"The myth of the Negro past is one of the principal supports of race prejudice in this country," it began. "Unrecognized in its efficacy, it rationalizes discrimination . . ."

Most major universities today-despite initial resistance in the 1980s-require at least some study of either non-Western cultures or minority or women's issues.

Still, critics say the dictates of political correctness are undermining traditional academic standards.

True or not, that clearly wasn't the point the young anthropologist set out to make when he first became intrigued by African culture in the 1920s.

Born in 1895, he studied and then began teaching at Columbia University in New York after World War I and then took a position at Howard University in Washington, one of the few white professors at a traditionally black college.

At Howard, his student assistant was Hurston, who later wrote the classic "Their Eyes Were Watching God." It was an association that proved pivotal, as it set him thinking about the genesis of cultural differences.

In 1927, Herskovits came to Northwestern, the first anthropologist on the faculty. And it was at Northwestern that he, assisted by his wife, Frances, a fellow anthropologist, began ground-breaking field research in West Africa, as well as Surinam, Haiti, Trinidad and other lands where blacks had once been taken into slavery.

"He demonstrated that African cultures were complex, not simple, that they had kingdoms and systems of laws and strong social structures," explained Robert Baron, director of the folk arts program at the New York State Council on the Arts and an expert on Herskovits.

Baron said Herskovits was particularly intrigued by subtle behavioral customs carried over from Africa that translated into cultural misunderstandings in this country. One example was a tendency of black youngsters to avert their eyes or turn their heads when talking to teachers.

Whites interpreted this as a sign of disrespect. In fact, it was just the opposite. In black cultures in Africa and South America, Herskovits found, young men were not supposed to look at elders to whom they were speaking.